Human Cocoons

I’ve tried to take a photo of the sky on several occasions, to catch a beautiful sunset or rainbow in digital immortality. But, more often than not, the expanse is marred by the web of power lines stretching every which way alongside the roads and over hills. Out in the more rural areas they are less rampant of course, but on the average suburban street, one cannot see the sky without also seeing the lines bringing electrical life to our dwellings. Telephone, cable, internet, and electricity; whether buried or strung up above, we depend on these connections for our daily living and with them cocoon ourselves in strands of modernity. Like lifelines to our IV drips, the power lines feed us our high-speed diets of communication, entertainment, and electronic living, and we gobble it like hungry caterpillars.
Above us, the power lines; beneath our feet, concrete and asphalt. Spread over the earth like frosting hardening into a shell, an exoskeleton of humankind, the paving of our streets, sidewalks, parking lots, shopping centers and freeways bring us in touch with each other and more distant from the natural beauty being pushed back, subdued, and slaughtered around us.
Life is easy, convenient, and fast inside this cocoon. I am not saying that it is wrong to be so. I am simply observing the state of things, and cannot help wondering whether we have become so used to being caterpillars that we forget there is a world beyond the cocoon, waiting to welcome butterflies. As we continue to wire and pave our world, we lose touch with its beauty, grow increasingly numb to its absence, and finally, become content with a man-made environment that knows no Creator but us. This is why I grow weary in the city, weary with longing for natural aesthetics.
I am thankful I live where I can still walk among trees.